Speaking Linguistic Atlas of Bavaria

The maps serving as the basis of this project are from the "Kleiner Bayerischer Sprachatlas" ("Small Bavarian Linguistic Atlas"). It was published by the dtv publishing house in Munich in 2006 and, with more than 120 maps and corresponding comments, offers an overview of the manifold dialects of Bavaria that is academically substantiated, but nonetheless understandable also for a layperson. This popular atlas is in turn based on the material of six linguistic atlases, which were compiled as fundamental academic works (starting in 1984) at the German-linguistic departments of the universities of Augsburg, Bayreuth, Erlangen, Passau and Würzburg.

These atlases were produced by visiting approximately 1600 places all over Bavaria, each for about one week, recording material. Thus comparable data material of at least 2,300 dialect sequences was recorded, both acoustically and in phonetic writing.

The sound documents form 70 places which are used for the "speaking linguistic atlas of Bavaria" were recorded and processed anew in 2006.

User guide

The maps are based on surveys which took place between 1984 and 1995, the respondents' average age being 75.

The sound material for the "speaking linguistic atlas" was recorded around 15 to 20 years later, for which reason some terms or forms that were still known in 1990 where no longer known to the speakers. Consequently, some of the sound documents do not coincide with the linguistic areas indicated on the maps. Moreover, for various reasons the sound documents are incomplete regarding both locations and topics.

For each map the page of the printed version of the linguistic atlas is shown at the bottom right. In this section also explanations of the maps are provided. They are not contained in the online version.

We would like to give cordial thanks to the speakers who volunteered for these recordings and to all those who helped us find these speakers (in particular the linguistic atlas projects of Middle Franconia, Lower Bavaria and Lower Franconia, and local representatives of the "Förderverein Bairische Sprache und Dialekte" ("Association in support of the Bavarian language and dialects")).